


Escape From Fort 441

by sea_beasty



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Casual Sex, Character Death, Customer Service & Tech Support, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Interspecies Romance, Original Characters - Freeform, Platonic Relationships, Plotting, Regret, Sex Work, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-25 18:27:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30093258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_beasty/pseuds/sea_beasty
Summary: Kidnapped from their home city of Pendari, five teenagers are put to work in a hostel on the remote mining world of Prakith. Customer service is bad at the best of times, but with dark force users amassing nearby, they must work together to escape Fort 441.





	1. Pendari

When the fire started, Qume threw her window of opportunity wide open and ran as fast as she could to the spaceport. She passed horrified onlookers, their features razed with soot and devastated intensity, as the distant flames took on the force of the setting sun. Gravel flew beneath her feet as she skidded to a stop in front of electric gates topped with razor wire. The red light on the security camera blinked at her and she all but gave it a cocky grin. _What did it matter if Kursta from the Sheriff’s office saw her trespass?_ she thought, _She’d be gone by dusk_.

She dropped to her knees in front of a three-foot long section of exposed fence, likely dug out by rabbits or stintatrils. She drove her elbows into the dirt and pulled herself through to the other side. The she took shelter behind some crates to assess her surroundings. About two dozen ships were docked on the blacktop, all unoccupied. There was no flying when the midday sky had turned volcanic-red. One ship in particular caught her attention; a _Lambda_ -class T-4a shuttle with the Mining Guild’s golden crown of thorns painted on the flank.

Yes. That was to be her ticket out. However, one thing still stood between her and freedom. Qume sized up the spaceport official in his tollbooth about twenty feet away. He was leaning tensely against the doorway to gawk at the fire with his back turned to the security camera feeds. In fact, ‘official’ felt like a misnomer. He was barely eighteen at a glance, short, fidgety, with crumbs down his shirtfront.

 _Did I know him from somewhere?_ Qume thought. _She wasn’t good with faces_. But she was very well-armed, so it balanced out. She bent down behind the crates she was sheltering with. Wriggling her hand in her boot, her fingertips brushed the hard leather pommel of a knife. There was also a larger dagger tucked down the back of her shirt—a _kami_ , an elite foot-long piece of steel, beautiful in the firelight. Not to mention the poison earrings she wore at all times. True, she was more than prepared to scrummage her way across the spaceport, but perhaps it didn’t have to be tooth and nail. She looked past the toll booth official. There was a clear path to the Guild shuttle if she stayed low and moved at a clip.

 _He is familiar_ , Qume decided. _His name would come to her any minute now_. If she was careless at this crucial stage, her plan could erupt in her face, putting her right bak at the bottom of the dirt-entrenched totem pole. Then again… fortune favours the bold, right? 

She ran up, knocked on the glass and said, “Hey—Henre! How you been?”

He startled, then caught sight of her, and recognition came into his eyes. “You worked for Rochester, right? Did the speeders on Acorn Avenue.”

“Sure am. Good thing Rochester’s not here right now. He’d slap that dumb hat off your head checking for loose credits. Bet he’s probably in the vaults right now, filling his coat with as many treasures as he can find before they burn up.”

“The vaults have been broken into?” Qume saw the cogs begin to turn in his mind.

“Oh, didn’t you know? It’s chaos out there. All the other officials have long since abandoned their posts and taken their annual bonuses early—if you know what I mean.” She gave his back a friendly thumping. “Beat it, while there’s still stuff worth taking.”

As soon as Henre was out of sight, Qume took his place in the toll booth. Her escape plan was simple: find a ship, break in, set the auto-pilot, and sit back and relax. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to fly. On an agriworld like Pendari, people were lackadaisical about up-skilling and downright hostile toward tourists, smugglers, rebel pilots, and space transients of any kind. Ergo—support for a publicly-funded flight school was virtually non-existent. You stayed grounded in the salty loam like the Creator intended. Ironically, the capitol settlement of Pendari was situated two miles in the air above the lush fields and pastures where its people toiled day and night. A great metal cube standing on forked towers all alone and at odds with such a small green planet, defying gravity and straining toward the stars. Perhaps that’s why it burned so well—no one around to help put out the fire.

The Mining Guild ship was perfect for Qume’s purposes. A delegation shuttle would have pre-programmed routes to the coordinates of every Guild-controlled world stored in its nav-computer. Lothal, Takodana, Ord Mantell, even Cloud City. She imagined touching down in a foreign spaceport, ready to bear into the crowd and loose herself in another life.

At that moment, the shuttle’s ramp dropped open amidst a cloud of compressed air. A group of white-clad figures were approaching and Qume immediately dropped to the floor behind the console. Peering around the corner, she saw the medic’s lotus flower insignia on the back of their jackets. They were accompanied by another four individuals wearing tinfoil shock blankets. There was a terrific bang from back the way the group had come. Distant people screamed. An exterior wall had exploded free from the burning settlement and it was sailing down toward the planet’s surface like a meteor. One of the medics was wearing a full-face helmet, and he lifted his head toward the explosion, grabbed two of the patients by the arm and dragged them aboard the Guild ship.

As they drew parallel to Qume’s toll booth, she heard the faceless medic insist, “We need to treat you for smoke inhalation. Quickly!” The group disappeared into the shuttle, but the ramp stayed tantalisingly lowered. Perhaps the Guild brought had healers in their delegation and they’d offered to treat the wounded as a gesture of goodwill to oil the wheels of negotiation? When they were safely out of earshot, Qume sprinted across the blacktop. The ship’s engine hummed to life right as she reached the ramp and she rolled onboard with seconds to spare.


	2. Point of No Return

Hearing voices from the front of the ship, Qume descended a ladder into the cargo hold and took cover behind some more crates. (She decided the delegates must be dirty—there was entirely too much cargo for such a diminutive ship and stuffy, white-collar crew.) She couldn't see, but she could hear just fine. Suddenly there was a mass of _clicks_ , like so many safety switches turning off. This was followed by a great deal of yelling, a wounded bellow then silence. After a few beats, a female voice could be heard complaining about the temperature.

 _That doesn't sound like conventional first aid_ , thought Qume. _So—if I'm not dealing with a ship full of benevolent doctors, what am I dealing with?_

Peering around the crates, she could make out the medics—now shorn of their snowy jackets, dressed in Guild grey—pointing blasters at their patients—now hostages. One of the hostages, a human, was unconscious on the floor. Binders were coming out, securing each of the four unfortunates to the handrail. The human's head lolled as they hoisted him up, and a female voice, the same one from before said, "We need to keep them contained, else we risk repeating past mistakes."

At that point, Qume's appetite for freedom failed her. As she crept backward toward the ladder, she brushed a crate with her shoulder. She whipped around to check if anyone had noticed and, lining up perfectly with spaces between cargo, was caught directly in the sightline of one of the hostages. Defiant, she stared back. There was something strangely intimate about only being able to see the eyes of another person, and despite everything, Qume found herself transfixed. This stare was old and grey as the moon, its touch illicit, holding her firmly by the reigns. Maybe they weren't all grey, perhaps there was a secret mauve hidden so deep she ended up swimming in its watery hue. She reeled herself back to reality but her thoughts were still swirling, trying to catch up to her.

A voice broke through her reverie.

“Hey, what’s this one staring at? Madam Castroma—!”

Seconds had passed and the girl was still staring, drawing a giant red arrow between her and Qume's hiding place. She scrambled backwards, tripping over her feet and grabbing the doorway for balance. A hand shot out and dragged her back into the light.

"Let me go, let me go!" The soldiers' shouting combined with the sound of hatch slamming shut over the ladder above her were enough to turn Qume absolutely feral. She flipped herself onto her back and sat up, kicking the arm holding her ankle. Another pair of hands grabbed her by the throat and she bit down, hard.

"Fuck!" They dragged her over to the other prisoners and cuffed her to the handrail, all blasters now trained on the five of them. Qume was in such a state she could barely see, muscles taught in places she didn’t know she had any, clamped teeth grinding away to dust. How had it all gone so wrong so quickly? Someone broke the ranks of soldiers and approached her; a blue reptilian creature who looked small enough to kick.

"A stowaway," said the reptile in rich tones for such a shrivelled constitution. "Welcome aboard the _Sui Exitum_ dear, have a seat.”

Qume said something unrepeatable in return. A soldier took one step toward her and raised his hand. There was a dull _whap_! and she stopped fighting. Someone gasped. The shock, more than the pain, came in waves of nausea that made her eyes water.

“That wasn't very nice, was it? Now, no more interruptions and we’ll get along splendidly.”

“Ma’am, if you just tell us what’s going on, I think everyone could relax,” said the person shackled next to her. He registered in Qume’s periphery as blue; a twi’lek perhaps? She held her breath for the retaliation.

He kept going, “Are you diplomats? You might know my Dad, he works at the embassy—”.

The reptile woman held up a quivering fist, as if unable to contain her frustration. “I represent the Mining Guild, in grateful and loyal service to His Glory, the potent and courageous governor for life, Director Emmilson. You may call me Madame Castroma. And you’ll thank us for elevating you to a life in service of our noble cause.” Everyone paused, taking this in. One by one, the five prisoners awkwardly bowed their heads, which seemed to mollify her. Castroma stepped over the human’s prone body, and she and her soldiers departed to the cabin.

Qume heard her say something like, “Now get the bloody radiator working before we freeze to bits.” They left behind the helmeted officer to stand guard, who, Qume saw from up close, was not only faceless but eyeless, with a single red sensor where features should be.

Qume was still seething. “You leathery old bitch. I’m going to flush you out the airlock!”

“Keep your voice down—there’s a gank.” whispered her left-hand neighbour, an ivory skinned near-human.

“A what?”

“The one with the helmet. They’re mercenaries who work for the Hutts.”

“Actually, I’m an independent contractor.” Qume and the girl startled as they looked up and saw the ganks’ red eye trained on them, “Be careful who you stereotype.” With that, he left in the direction of the washroom. Qume was about to comment when she made eye contact with the other girl for the first time and recognised her eyes as the same grey ones from before.

“You—you ratted me out!”

“What are you talking about.”

“You stared at me so long they saw exactly where I was hiding. I was _just_ about to escape.”

“If I’m not mistaken, you snuck onboard in the first place. We were kidnapped,” she said darkly. “But you have no one to blame but yourself.”

Qume was about to combust, “Unbelievable. Now we’re both going to become property of the Mining Guild BECAUSE YOU HAVE A MORALITY COMPLEX!”

Disturbed by the raised voices, the human began to stir. He lifted his head off the ground and the metal grooves on the floor had imprinted themselves on his cheek. He had a large stoic face and hands that could throttle tree trunks.

“They knocked you out, right? Hows your head?” asked Qume.

“Bad.” He took a long, hard look at his cuffed wrist and asked, "What's going on?”

“We are heading for a rendezvous with, and I quote, ‘the potent and courageous governor for life, Director Emmilson.’”

"Who?"  
  
“Don’t know. Destination is…well, we don’t actually know where we’re going.”

The girl cleared her throat, “Prakith.” When no-one responded, she said, "Think about it. Last month, the Mining Guild signed an agreement with the Deep Core Trade Coalition.”

“Never heard of them,” snapped Qume.

“They facilitated trade between Deep Core worlds and Coruscant. But when the Senate fell, things became a lot less…democratic. The Empire named their price and the Coalition bent over backward to meet their quotas and ship everything on time. Now the Empire’s gone, the Mining Guild offered to buy out half their galactic territory in exchange for a massive bailout. Prakith is about to become their most profitable investment in a millennia. My guess is that we’re going there.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Qume’s blue neighbour, the twi’lek.

“I read the news.”

The five prisoners stared ahead blankly. The hard cement of reality had come apart like an earthquake and they had fallen through. Swallowed up by despair. Indentured servitude on a Deep Core mining world, light years from home. The noose was well and try fixed.

“At least the trip to Prakith is only about 14 hours,” said the human, determinedly.

“And these bastards are going to keep us chained up the whole time,” said Qume.

"Don't worry. I'm going to get us out of here.” He gave the binders a great big tug, and when nothing happened he sat back with a folded brow. After a moment, he seemed to remember himself and turned to her once more.

“Unys Kier,” he said sternly, “Captain of the _Trebuchet_.”

“Qume. Captain of nothing.” She shook his extended hand with some difficulty. Unys reached backwards over his head to grasp the twi’lek’s hand, who introduced himself as Fitz Al-Ameen.

“Al Ameen? You did my homework for all three years of community school,” exclaimed Qume.

“And you helped me out with…well, thanks again.” He beamed. “I heard you and De Fibo broke up.” When they met in first year, Qume was going through a season of joylessly burning her way through partners of every gender, making up for quality with quantity. A trail of exterminated hearts rubbled behind her. She loved a good make-out session, and a human boy, De Fibo, was her latest victim.

“He couldn’t keep up with me.”

Fitz’s eyebrows went up. “In the sack or on the street?”

“Both.” They high-fived weakly. His smile widened as he caught sight of the girl sitting on Qume’s left side. This wasn't unusual for Fitz—overjoyed was his default setting.

“Pakma! We did that fundraiser for the Youth Outreach Society, don’t you remember?”

She didn’t.

“And you are?” He asked of the final prisoner. _Finally, a familiar face_ , thought Qume. Yuuzhan’s knees were bundled so tightly to her chest it seemed that at any moment her body could collapse in on itself like a dying star. Mute.

Qume took the liberty of introducing her to the others, “This is Yuuzhan.” There was nothing more to say. The togruta's disappearance a year ago left the townsfolk of Pendari, including her parents, to assume she had gallivanted off to the Mid Rim to elope, and her subsequent return was on the heels of a miscarriage, or an infidelity scandal, or crime spree, or something. All speculation was based on the fact that she grew up using makeup earlier than most girls, and was remembered as very pretty and a bit standoffish. Qume, who knew her from the community centre, knew she was profoundly sad. So sad it was hard being around her.

A blue hand was thrust across Qume’s lap toward Yuuzhan, holding gum. “Want some?” She took it with a small smile. _What is this foppish, delightful man doing with the rest of us, antisocial delinquents?_

_More importantly, what was going to happen to them now?_


End file.
